Frank Pallone: “Mr. Speaker, once again, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. I heard what the previous speaker said, and this…”

“Mr. Speaker, once again, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. I heard what the previous speaker said, and this rehashes the same thing that we discussed with some of the bills that were voted on yesterday, which is this notion that somehow fossil fuels are reliable and renewables are not. There are reliability problems with every form of energy, but what we need to do is to say that we are going to do all of the above. In other words, we are not going to just say, as the Republicans want, we are only using fossil fuels: oil, gas, and coal. There are problems with reliability with those. We need to have everything, all of the above. Republicans keep saying that they are for all of the above, but the President and Republicans continually say: No renewables, no wind, no solar, and other forms of renewables. This idea that somehow one form of energy is more reliable than another is simply not the case. However, that is not what I want to talk about as I close, Mr. Speaker. I want you to understand and my colleagues to understand how concerned I am about pipeline safety which, of course, they simply ignore. I mentioned this earlier, but one of the things that really disturbs me about this bill is that Republicans are pushing to remove environmental safeguards for gas pipelines at the same time they are refusing to act on vitally important pipeline safety legislation.”